Railroad Commission v. Stephens

147 S.W.2d 879
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJanuary 29, 1941
DocketNo. 9001.
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 147 S.W.2d 879 (Railroad Commission v. Stephens) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Railroad Commission v. Stephens, 147 S.W.2d 879 (Tex. Ct. App. 1941).

Opinion

BAUGH, Justice.

This case arose as follows: On October 21, 1938, the District Court of Travis County entered a judgment in two consolidated suits, involving the legality of certain oil and' oil products, sought to be confiscated by the State, located in earthen pits A B C and D in the city of Gladewater in Gregg County, Texas. The trial court found that the oil in pits C and D was illegal oil, and that the oil in pits A and B was legal oil and the property of John M. Stephens, receiver. The court thereupon ordered confiscated and sold, as provided by law, all of the oil' in pits C and D; adjudged all of’the oil then in pits A and B to be lawful oil, and directed the Railroad Commission to issue tenders to the receiver for the sale thereof upon his compliance with the applicable rules and regulations of the Commission. The quantity of oil in pits A and B was, in said judgment, found to be approximately 57,050 barrels. This judgment was not appealed from. Pursuant to it the Railroad Commission, prior to October, 1939, issued tenders for the sale and removal *880 from pits A and B of 57,050 barrels qf oil. • In October, 1939, there still remained in these pits a quantity of oil, estimated at approximately 26,750 barrels, for which the Railroad Commission refused to issue tenders, contending that all the oil in these pits on October 21, 1938, and covered by the judgment of that date, had already been removed, and consequently that the remaining oil here involved was not lawful oil.

Thereupon the receiver filed a motion in the original consolidated suit to require the Commission to show cause for its refusal to issue such tenders, alleging that the oil here involved was included in the original judgment of October 21, 1938; and that the refusal by the Commission to issue such tenders was in violation of that judgment. The motion was duly controverted on-the facts alleged, a full hearing had thereon, and the trial court ordered the Commission to issue such tenders, from which order this appeal is prosecuted.

In response to request duly made, the trial court filed findings of fact and conclusions of law. The appellant here contends that some of these fact findings are wholly without competent evidence to support them; and further that some of such findings are in such irreconcilable conflict with others that no judgment could be based thereon.

Appellee has filed a motion to dismiss the appeal, and urges same also in his brief, on the ground that the order appealed from is not a final appealable judgment ; but is merely the execution of the former judgment wherein the matters attempted to be reviewed on this, appeal have already been adjudicated.

It is true that appellee instituted this proceeding by motion filed in the original suit, on the ground that the subject matter had already been adjudicated; and the trial court found that said oil here in controversy was the same oil that was in pits A and B when the former judgment was rendered. But the State, in answer to appellee’s show cause motion, pleaded that said oil had been run into these' pits without legal authority to do so, since the final judgment of October 21, 1938, was rendered; and that it therefore was unlawful oil. If that were true, then the State could have brought an inde-’ pendent suit to condemn said oil, and the same issues could have been there tried as are here presented. And, if appellee’s motion to show cause be treated as “a supplemental bill seeking to carry into effect a final judgment theretofore entered,” an appeal from a judgment disposing of such plea would .lie. Holland v. Preston, 12 Tex.Civ.App. 585, 34 S.W. 975, writ refused; 3 Tex.Jur., § 74, p. 139. See also Voigtlander v. Brotze, 59 Tex. 286; Newman v. City of El Paso, Tex.Civ.App., 77 S.W.2d 721. Appellee’s motion partakes of the nature of an attempted levy of an execution on property asserted to have been included in a final judgment already rendered, wherein a party claiming an interest in such property, denies that such property" was included in the judgment, and a trial is had on that issue. In such case an order of the court thereon is appealable. 18 Tex.Jur. § 65, p. 608. Such an issue does not constitute an attack on the original judgment.

In the original judgment the "trial court found that these two pits had a total capacity of approximately 66,905 barrels; and that they then contained approximately 57,050 barrels of lawful oil. But he also found that all of the oil then contained in said pits was lawful oil, enjoined the Commission from interfering with the receiver’s sale and transportation of it, and ordered the oil removed from said earthen pits and placed in steel storage tanks.

In his findings in the trial upon the show cause motion, the trial court again found that since the judgment Of October 21, 1938, no additional oil had been placed in pits A and B; and that the oil here in controversy is the remaining portion and a part of the identical oil that was in said pits on October 21, 1938. He also found that the maximum capacity of the two pits, which had not meantime' been increased nor decreased, was approximately 66,905 barrels; that the total maximum amount of oil ever placed in said two pits was approximately 64,127 barrels; that the receiver had removed therefrom 57,-050 barrels of oil; and that there still remained therein approximately 26,739 barrels of oil.

It is the contention of the State that these findings are irreconcilably in conflict. That under such findings, these two pits with a total capacity of 66,905 actually must have contained on October 21,' 1938, 83,789 barrels of oil, or 19,662 more than the court found they would hold; and that it was impossible for there to remain in October, 1939, 26,739 barrels of *881 oil after 57,050 barrels had been removed. Had there been no other findings, this contention would undoubtedly be correct, unless the term “approximately” as used by the trial court in his findings can be construed to cover a leeway of the 26,739 barrels difference.

Not only in the original findings filed herein, however, but in the amended and corrected findings subsequently filed, the trial court also found in substance that it was impossible to calculate within a reasonable degree of accuracy either the capacity of such earthen pits or the amount of oil in them, “as such calculations are subject to error and are approximations of the engineer only.”

These findings are attacked as being unsupported by the evidence in that with measurements made by the engineers the volume of fluid is merely a matter of calculation under fixed mathematical formulas. If all the measurements had been exact, and the physical contour lines of the sides and bottoms of the earthen pits in fact established, such fluid capacity or volume could of course have been accurately calculated. But this was not done. The calculations of the engineer were based, not upon an accurate survey of the bottoms of the pits, but upon soundings or measurements made at 10-foot intervals over the pit from the surface of the oil to where he found the bottom of the pit to be at these particular points. Such method, in an earthen pit with a varying and irregular bottom, must of necessity render possible errors dependent upon the variations encountered.

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Bluebook (online)
147 S.W.2d 879, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/railroad-commission-v-stephens-texapp-1941.